What stopped the trains during Corona time, the financial condition of the railway has gone down. That is why it does not even have money to pay pensions to its former employees and officers. There has been a report that the Ministry of Railways has written a letter to the Union Ministry of Finance to immediately intervene so that all retired persons can be given a pension in the current financial year.
This year, Rs 53,000 crore should be mentioned in the above media report that the railway currently has about 13 lakh officers and employees, the number of its pensioners has increased to 15 lakh. The railway is a completely official department, but it has to pay pension from its own fund. It estimates that its total pension expenditure will be close to Rs 53,000 crore during the year 2020-21. Railways have urged North Block to bear the same burden during the current year.
Ever since the Coronavirus outbreak in the Indian economy, the movement of trains across the country has been stopped. Although it operates some special trains and freight trains, it is not earning as much as it used to. It is due to these financial constraints that if this goes on for a long time, then he will not be able to pay the salary of all the employees on time.
The railway has become aware of its economic status. Therefore, we have started indicating this in higher-level meetings. It is said that during the recent meeting called by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to review the infrastructure-related projects, the Railways had also underlined this.
If the news of the railway's woeful condition is correct, then it can cause great problems. In fact, the central government plans to invest Rs 102 lakh crore by 2024 under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP). Railways have a substantial stake in it.
In the last year (FY 2019-20), Rs 53,000 crore was not fully given to the pension fund. As a result, the fund had a negative closing balance of about Rs 28,000 crore. Now that the situation has deteriorated, Rail Bhavan has requested North Block provide last year's dues for pensions and this year's full amount. The report quoted sources as saying that during top-level consultations, it indicated that high debt servicing liability provided Indian Railways' capabilities to generate resources internally. Has limited, which has severely affected the availability of funds for important projects.